Apple

Periscope is a new app that is creating quite a bit of buzz and a great amount of content from users all over the world. Everything from views of Paris to views of a refrigerator in Turkey is fair game for the content creators around the world, but this content has a very short lifespan.

24 hours after any broadcast the videos are destroyed. You have the option of saving the video on your camera, but it doesn’t save the comments which leads to a video of you answering questions that the viewers did not see, creating a confusing commentary track.

But with a simple free program already installed on your Mac, you can capture and record your Periscope videos with comments. All you need to do this is to plug your phone into your computer and follow these simple instructions.

A new movie window opens. Click on the prompt next to the record button to get an option of input sources. You should see your iPhone listed both under Video and Audio. Make sure those are selected. You should know this is working when you see your phone’s screen on your computer.

Step 4:

Open up the Periscope App on your phone and go into your profile to find your more recent broadcasts. Select the video you want and start playing.

Step 5:

Click the record button on Quicktime on your Mac and start making a screen capture of your movie as it is playing on your phone.

Step 6:

Finish and save and do with it what you will.

NOTE: I don’t know if this works on older model devices–I’ve only used it on an iPhone 6 but it should work on an iPhone 5 as well.

Today the lines are back, and organization is being forced on those waiting by the police and security officials. “Cattle pens” have been set up to keep the iPhone line sitters from milling about, cutting in line, getting distracted, etc. Police using crush barricades have made nearly 45 pens along the Star Ferry walkway outside the Apple Store, and are filling each pen with about 20 people. When someone tries to leave a pen to go to the bathroom or get some food, security officials photograph them with a digital camera so they will be allowed to re-enter their sorted pen.

But this isn’t enough.

The 45 pens stretch nearly the entire distance of the Star Ferry walkway to just a few hundred feet from the ferry entrance. The surging mass of 100s who have yet to be penned are now stuck behind the last pen and the entrance to the ferry. Security officials (including some from Apple) are now building new pens on the other side of the walkway to shepherd in the waiting masses.

The scene is pretty surreal. These are not “Apple Fanboys” by any stretch, but low income migrant workers from places like Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. There are men, women, old grandmothers, even some infant babies who are bundled up tight for the long night ahead. There are also plenty of wannabe-Triad boys, gathered together with funky haircuts and tattoos, many of them with their faces covered by surgical masks (and it’s not because they have a cold). Each iPhone they are able to buy will bring a profit of about $100US, which is the same as a weeks wages in some of the lower income jobs in Hong Kong. If the limit is 5 iPhones per person, they’ll each clear a month’s worth of work so you begin to understand while they are willing to sleep outside all night.

'Blue Berets' of the PTU squads arrive

UPDATE 5:00pm: I added some more photos from this evening. Police have dispatched a platoon of riot police known as a PTU unit. The line extended at one time down the ferry bridge and onto the street, but after some reshuffling of the ‘pens’ they seem to get everyone back up on the bridge. It also appears that they are not allowing anyone else to enter the line, but I can’t tell if that was a temporary thing or permanent change (my Cantonese isn’t that good).

They love their Apple gear in Hong Kong, and they also love to line up to get it. In fact, this line of about 150-200 people outside the Hong Kong Apple Store isn’t even “official”–it’s just people milling about waiting to get into the official line that will start “soon” according to some in the know.

Well I finished the Steve Jobs biography. At first it seemed rather daunting until I realized the last 100 pages or so are an index and notes and whatnot, and then I noticed the font is rather large and spaced out a bit more than the normal dime store crime novels I usually read. Managed to read the whole thing (on my iPad) in under a week.

A few takeaways from the book, for those considering reading it.

1) It’s a good history of Apple as much as it is a biography of Steve Jobs. If you are someone who knows the basic story, much of the book will be rather like re-reading a copy of Forbes or something, with an occasionally paragraph or two thrown in about some of the inner conversations that were going on during that time. I was actually hoping that there would be more of his personal recollections (i.e. thoughts) about how certain things went down. Many of his conversations with the author seemed almost for ‘show’–i.e. he knew he was being recorded.

2) Steve Jobs was a bit of a jerk, to say the least. In fact, I kind of wondered if he had a bipolar disorder or something. Some of what he was doing was beyond just ‘getting his way’ or ‘pushing the envelope’ but somewhat more severe. The book is filled to the brim with examples of fights, but there is one rather telling moment toward the end in which the author points out:

“The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him. But it did, at times, serve a purpose….”

I think my biggest fear is that people are going to take as a lesson they should ‘act like Steve Jobs’ and be a jerk and a yeller and a fighter, rather than consider they should ‘think like Steve Jobs’, and look at different approaches and focus, like a laser, on the things that make a difference. I can see half-assed attempts, primarily by assholes already, to justify their pathetic office behavior as “it’s what Steve would do” but they haven’t an ounce of the talent or vision for what he was fighting to develop. God forbid I end up working for a yeller without conviction. I think my laughing in his face is just going to make him even angrier.

3) Apple is very strong now. I think about some of the crappy goalkeepers I’ve seen playing in soccer who have had their star rise by the fact they are surrounded by a good defense. It’s easy to stop 10 shots a year when those are the only 10 you face. Apple has a very strong team in place. They don’t have any crappy goalkeeper. They don’t need a goalkeeper-the rest of the team is strong enough. They’ve basically be working through all the iterations of all the problems and successes Apple has had over the last decade. Product inventory management, supply chain production issues, design and vision–these are things that are being pushed by the various heads of Apple from the ground up rather than from the top down. As a fan it’s good to see that they will have some leaders in place for the next few years to keep up the process of making great machines.

4) Steve Jobs’ family was something I knew very little about. While I knew the story of how he met his wife, and that he had a previous daughter, and probably could have mentioned he had three other children, I hadn’t the foggiest as to their names, interests, goals, etc. I had never seen a wedding photo of Steve Jobs nor photos of his kids. For such a public face he really did do a great deal to shield his family from the spotlight. While I was reading the book I finally said “ok, just where the heck does he live in Palo Alto” and took a look at the google maps view, only to discover I had been in that neighborhood a half dozen times myself, even favoring a Chinese restaurant nearby on more than one visit. Guess I just never pursued an interest in his personal life and he never held out his family that publicly.

So, is it worth it? Yea, probably. You’ve heard most of the juicy bits. There are other smaller stories inside which also are interesting. I personally found the description of Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs looking at a knife kind of interesting. Both thought, at first glance, that it was wonderfully designed, but then they both noticed a small hint of glue that connected the blade to the handle and quickly put down the knife, upset that the manufacturer had taken the easy way out. They also pointed out the influence of Steve Jobs father, who noted that a fine carpenter would never put a piece of plywood on the back of some furniture just because no one would see it. Lessons like these are why the insides of a Mac are almost as beautifully laid out as the outside casings.

When OS 10.7 came out, a number of digital photographers and filmmakers were aghast. Terabytes of data stored on Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices were no longer visible as option in many common Mac programs. Of course, to be fair, things like iMovie were never design for NAS units, but some enterprising hackers found a way through this simple command line:

defaults write -app iMovie allowNV -bool true

Unfortunately when Lion came out, even this command line option was no longer working.

But today OS 10.7.2 was released by Apple and when I booted up iMovie after the update, viola–there it was again. My Drobo in the other room hosting 100s of GBs of home movies was once again accessible to iMovie. I’ve tried reading the release notes but didn’t see any mention of this new ‘feature’, but hey, I’ll take it.

So if you haven’t run that command line or updated to 10.7.2 and are looking to store you digital media elsewhere, try out this tip and see if it works for you.

Just a few pictures from tonight’s vigil at the Apple store. That’s @hypercasey on the ladder, graciously provided to us by the IFC Security Team (who were also handing out post-it notes). @angiewong is there giving interviews as she was the coordinator of tonight’s event.

This was the scene at the Hong Kong Apple Store in IFC Mall. First flowers arrived (with the subsequent media mobbing the mourner). Tonight there will be an iVigil at 7:00PM where Apple fans will pay their respects.